THE INDEPENDENT, London, November 19, 2001
By Justin Huggler in Cheshma-ye Bangi

An Afghan man lifts the head of a child who along with 11 other civilians died during US air raids in Kabul on October 28, 2001, witnesses said a man and his seven children were killed when a bomb crashed through their home. (AP photo)More photos

A catastrophic error by carpet-bombing US Air Force warplanes was blamed
yesterday for the deaths of about 150 unarmed Afghan civilians in a densely
populated frontline town caught up in the battle for the Taliban redoubt of
Kunduz.

Terrified refugees fleeing the town of Khanabad yesterday told The
Independent that American planes had bombed the area a few miles from Kunduz
daily since Thursday, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the buildings
they were bombing were civilian homes. All day yesterday, huge plumes of
smoke rose from the hills on the front lines near the Taliban's last
northern stronghold as B-52 bombers continued to drop their loads of bombs.

"I saw 20 dead children on the streets," said Zumeray, one of the refugees.

"Forty people were killed yesterday alone. I saw it with my own eyes. Some
of them were burned by the bombs, others were crushed by the walls and roofs
of their houses when they collapsed from the blast."

The relentless US pounding appears to have persuaded the Taliban forces to
surrender, provided the Northern Alliance fighters pledge not to kill the
mostly Arab and Pakistani fighters among them. The Taliban offer was
conditional on UN representatives monitoring the surrender, they said.

The still-unverified reports of the killing of civilians by US bombers may
further complicate attempts to flush out Taliban and al-Qa'ida fighters. The
Taliban have also remained in control in their southern stronghold,
Kandahar, while US jets continued to pound them from the skies. The bombing
raids over the past two days were described as among the heaviest in 43 days
of war.

Khanabad lies 10 miles from Kunduz, one of only two major population centres
in Afghanistan still under Taliban control. The refugees said they had
endured three days of bombing before the Taliban ordered them out of their
homes and told them they were free to cross the front line.

About 40,000 people live in Khanabad. The refugees said all but a few, who
stayed behind to guard the houses, fled yesterday. "There was no one in
Khanabad to see what happened," said Farhod, 20, who was travelling with his
parents and his younger brothers and sisters. "There are a lot of dead
people there."

Zumeray had walked across the front line with his mother, his sister and her
children, after abandoning three months' worth of food in Khanabad. The
children had no shoes; they had been walking for seven hours and their feet
were raw.

He spoke of seeing pieces of burned black bodies strewn around where the
bombs had landed. "When the bombs hit, there was fire everywhere," he said.
The first bombs came on Thursday, he said, and the first house hit belonged
to a man called Agha Padar.

"It was God who brought this on Khanabad," said Farhod. "The people there
have had to suffer so much. We had so many problems when the Taliban came,
and now this.

"This is the work of the Taliban," said Zumeray, insisting that he was not
angry with the Americans. "The Taliban were so cruel, and God brought the
Americans to help us."

The refugees' faces were full of fear. They walked all day, a steady stream
of families fleeing their homes. Some had newborn babies in their arms. They
all told the same story. As they spoke, B-52s circled lazily overhead and
the huge explosions of the bombs echoed in the mountains. The children grew
nervous at the sound.

While most support the attacks on the Taliban, one man shouted angrily that
the Americans were wrong to kill civilians

Bombings kill 1,000 around Kunduz: Report AFP

HINDUSTAN TIMES, November 19, 2001

(Islamabad, November 19)
More than 1,000 people were killed by US airstrikes around the Taliban-held
city of Kunduz over the weekend, a newspaper here reported on Monday,
quoting a militia commander.

The commander, Mulla Fazil, told the daily Dawn by satellite phone that
heavy pounding from the air had killed some 800 people in the Kunduz area in
northern Afghanistan and 250 in nearby Khanabad district.

Fazil gave the air attacks as the chief reason for a decision by the Taliban
to surrender Kunduz if the handover to the victorious Northern Alliance
forces could be conducted under UN supervision.

With thousands of Taliban troops backed by hardcore Chechen, Arab and
Pakistani loyalists making a stand at Kunduz, US-52 bombers and fighters
have intensified their attacks in recent days